Afternoon all.
Scout - I'm guessing you have the Very Hungry Caterpillar book! I like this idea learningparade.typepad.co.uk/learning_parade/2010/04/the-very-hungry-caterpillar-new-story-resources.htm for practising story sequencing!
Carrots - sorry you are having such a time with dd. Can you "walk away from it" if only mentally (not advocating you actually abandon her - even if you are tempted) for a while and leave her to strop by herself? How does your peg chore chart work by the way?
Cats - I hope you are getting lots of good ideas for what to do with the DCs over the summer. From experience on holidays with my friend and her two I would say:
Try and get them outside for a bit when you can, even if it is just to the park or in the garden - are they old enough to enjoy garden "camp" making and cooking on campfires ( supervised of course) Wrapping potatoes in foil and putting them in hot embers ( and still eating them hard because I wasn't patient enough to wait two hours) is a great childhood memory for me. You can also slit the skin of bananas, push in squares of chocolate, wrap in foil and bake these in embers (much quicker).
Really restrict computer games, Nintendo DS, playstation etc. From my observation, behaviour deteriorates in direct proportion to time spent on DS! Maybe allow 30 mins in an evening?
Don't expect them to entertain themselves indefinitely. Give them clear times and expectations - eg "Until 11 o'clock, I need to go on mumsnet get jobs done so you need to do something by yourselves. ( Then get them to decide what they want to do - reading/lego/crafts or whatever rather than leave them randomly "roaming" the house). At 11 o'clock we will all got to the park/cafe/ice cream van/library or whatever.
Try and emphasise being "team (family name)" including yourself. So you might say: "Today I thought it might be fun to make a family camp in the garden. I've got some jobs to do first, so why don't you two work together as a team and see if you can build a really good den (hand over old rugs/sheet, clothes airer, clothes pegs, string, old carpet tiles, large pieces of cardboard or whatever you have to hand). At "time x" I'll come and see what you've done and if you have worked well asa team, we can make a camp fire and cook our lunch on it ( baked pots in embers 2 hours before lunch, plus heating up baked beans and sausage (either in kitchen) or in old saucepan on fire! (build fire in between 2 bricks that you can stand pan on!) If fire is a step too far, you could cook meal in kitchen but eat out in den!
Plan ahead when possible. If you know that tomorrow you can go to an activity in the library and on Friday you will go swimming it helps and I think the children benefit from having an idea of the schedule too!
Another great garden activity is making an obstacle course (crawl under rug weighted down at ends, balance on bricks/plank/ flower pots, carry jug of water for a few yards without spilling, hop between 2 markers etc etc) and timing each other doing it. Add up all your times to get a "family" score rather than individuals and try and decrease your family score rather than getting into the "it's not fair she can do it faster because she is older" type situations! There is as much fun in making the course as doing it imo!
Adora - on the "mummy is stressed" theme: When my friends two children were about aged 5 and 3, the 5 year-old asked her when they were travelling in a packed train carriage "Mummy are you still stressed?" She assured him that although she had been stressed ( about car breakdown) she wasn't any more, at which point her 3 year-old said very loudly to the amusement of the whole carriage "but Mummy, you are dressed, you are dressed!"
I'm having a bit of a disorganised time. It's my last few days of teaching before a holiday and I'm getting a bit of pre-holiday "do I really have to still keep going" syndrome. Plus I'm supposed to be sorting out clothes/packing etc for a family wedding on Saturday followed by a few days visit to a friend and feel like I'm not really organised for it. Also changes in routine and especially going away from home do sometimes trigger increased anxiety for me so I've got a bit of that going on. Plus I'm sharing a hotel room with my mother over the weekend which will not be easy as I won't feel I've got any personal space (I may need some very long baths!!). Fortunately I'm visiting a very understanding friend afterwards who will understand if I need to lie down in a darkened room for a while!!